McDonald's celebrates two decades of India operations with new TVC

McDonald’s recently completed 20 years of its India operations and to celebrate this feat they have launched a new campaign titled ‘A lot has changed. Nothing has changed.’

The ad conceptualised by Leo Burnett highlights that a lot has happened in the last 20 years at McDonald’s and is built on the insight that there are millions of moments which people have experienced at the store.

Speaking about the campaign, RajDeepak Das, Chief Creative Officer, Leo Burnett, South Asia said, “It has been sheer joy partnering with an iconic brand like McDonald’s for over half its journey in the country. Our new campaign ‘A lot has changed. Nothing has changed’ articulates how the small, but important joys have remained the same, despite so much else changing. Even 20 years later, a child opening a Happy Meal box will have the same unparalleled joy on his face, like children did 20 years ago. While executing the campaign, we tried recreating the details from the past 20 years for the story to come alive – right from the staff’s uniforms, the events that happened around the time, the whole hog. With Ram’s impeccable direction, I think this is film-making at its best.”

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Mediums

The campaign will run for three months and is mainly being led by television and digital. The brand is aiming to target the whole of West and south markets with this campaign.

Brand strategy

Commenting on how the communication of the brand has changed in the last 20 years, Kedar Teny, Director of Marketing & Digital at McDonald’s India said, “It can be divided in three phases- build, growth and accelerate. In 1996, there was a lot of curiosity in the minds of the consumers who were not familiar with the format of the store. The general perception which people had during that time was AC restaurants come with glass windows and non ACs are the ones without glass. So looking at a McDonald’s store from outside, people used to think that it is very expensive. In order to break the inhibition, the brand decided to convey this message to the consumers about the affordability at that point of time.”

He further added, “With the brand gaining acceptance among the consumers, they started localising the food, based on the pallet of their consumers. The Mc Alu Tikki was at an unimaginable price point of Rs 20. The product was launched in 1997 and its first communication came out in the year 2000. The brand has ever since innovated and moved with the trend, like in 2010, it introduced breakfast in its menu and later went on to launch McCafe. Our recent innovation is- ‘Share shakes’ which makes you question if you should eat it or drink it.”

Speaking about the future marketing plans, Kedar elaborated, “We have a pipeline process that uses consumer data information to understand potential trend and on what lies ahead. Based on this, we have a robust plan for marketing which will play out in the quarter.”